MeltingPot2020 Innovation Summit 2018

MeltingPot2020 Innovation Summit is the only platform in the region enabling collaboration, networking and knowledge share between the various stakeholders in the innovation eco-system to catalyze the transformation of the region into a global innovation hub.

Spotlight for 2017

Israel – The Startup Nation

The transformation of Israel into one of the most innovative countries in the world is nothing short of a miracle – from their model of desert agriculture to their recent metamorphosis into a high-tech super power. Israel has more Nasdaq-listed companies than any country barring US and China. It has more venture capital per capita and more startups than any other country in the world. Research and development (R&D) is a thrust area for the country, which also has more scientists and tech professionals than any other nation. In fact, as the Mayor likes to point out, the city itself is a start-up. It was built from scratch in the desert, outside the old Arab city of Jaffa, or Yafo as it is now called, over the last 100 years. Tel Aviv is now ranked as the fifth most robust start-up ecosystem in the world, according to a study by research firm Compass.

At MeltingPot2020 we shall have a special spotlight session comprising of bureaucrats and officials from Israel and India to exchange insights and share lessons that each can learn from the other in their quest to become the hub for global innovation.

MeltingPot2020 Innovation Summit 2017 begins with Israel ...

'Need to support budding innovators', says Dr. Mashelkar

Projects Corner

INNOVATION AGREEMENT WITH SU-KAM

CL Educate has signed an agreement with Su-Kam Power Systems Limited, India’s largest power solutions company to enable cutting edge research and start up incubation in universities in the area of power electronics. Under the aegis of the WAIN platform, covenants of this agreement include the following

Spotlight

A CL & IIT-BHU Innovation Success Story

IIT BHU is committed towards being a leading research institution by publishing 788 papers since Jan 2106 which also includes papers stemming from 40 International Collaborations. This prestigious Institute recently joined hands with Accendere, an edtech startup committed to promoting research culture among all stakeholders in the Society.

Trending

ATAL Tinkering Labs (ATL)

Niti Ayog has selected 257 schools across India to set up Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL). Under the aegis of the Atal Innovation Mission, the vision of this program is to Cultivate one Million children in India as Neoteric Innovators. In the long run, the program has targeted setting up 500 ATLs across the country.

Advancing Partnerships for Universal Health Coverage

Collaboration Corner

The Memorandum of Agreement was signed between CL Educate New Delhi and Chennai Institute of Technology (CIT), Chennai as well as Krupanidhi Group of Institutes (KGI).

The Memorandum of Agreement was signed for Research Incubation covering 40 students and 60 Faculty Members from Pharmaceutical, Management and Physio-therapy departments. The agreement was signed by Dr. Sam Paul Isaac (Director) of KGI and Sivakumar of CL Media on 4th February 2017.

Infocus

Innovation Awards

Undergraduate and School awards were nominated based on their ingenuity and social impact and were decided by an eminent jury comprising of Prof S Sadagopan, Director, IIITB; Prof Rishikesha Krishnan, Director, IIM Indore and Prof Anindya Chatterjee from IIT Kanpur. The award-winning projects included Manouve, a device that improves vision from Manav Rachna University; a cigarette filter that absorbs toxins from IIT Rourkee and a Smartphone app that detects garbage from IIT Ropar.

Industry Awards

Lifetime Achievement Award – The award was humbly conferred on Prof Sadagopan for his commitment to innovation over the past few decades

Innovation Leader of the Year Award – This was presented to Mr KT Rama Rao for transforming Telangana into the top state in innovation focus and ease of doing business in the country.

MeltingPot on Twitter

Raghuraman Rajan

Economist & Ex-RBI Governor

The 23rd governor of RBI, he was earlier Chief Economist at International Monetary Fund and Chief Economic Adviser for the Indian Government. Apart from authoring many books and papers, he is also a member of the “Group of Thirty” and the Ämerican Academy of Arts and Sciences

Carol Realini

Serial Entrepreneur, Mobile Payments & Banking Pioneer, Author

A successful Silicon Valley executive and expert in financial service inclusion, Carol is a staunch believer in the potential of mobile banking and payments to create financial inclusion. A serial entrepreneur, she has been recognized as one of the 50 Top Women in Technology by Corporate Board Member magazine. She has also co-authored a book – “Financial inclusion at the bottom of the pyramid” with Karl Mehta.

Deep Kalra

Founder MakeMyTrip

Founder & CEO of India’s largest online travel company that revolutionized the way Indians research and purchase travel services, Deep Kalra also serves as a Board Member of TiE Delhi and is an active angel investor in the internet space. Deep is a member of the NASSCOM Executive Council and chairs its Internet Working Group and has been recognized by Ernst & Young as Entrepreneur of the Year - Business Transformation (2011).

Desh Deshpande

VC And Entrepreneur

An Indian American venture capitalist and entrepreneur, he is best known for co-founding the Chelmsford, MA-based internet equipment manufacturer Sycamore Networks, the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT and the Deshpande Foundation. He was also appointed by President Barack Obama to the Co-Chairmanship of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a group established to support the US President's innovation strategy.

Kunwer Sachdeva

Founder & MD Su-Kam

Asad Butt

Operations Director, LearnLaunch Accelerator

A seasoned media and technology professional with over 12 years of experience working in both the creative and business aspects of startups, NGOs, media production companies and broadcast outlets, Asad Butt helped launch Bridges TV and also leveraged technology to connect High School students in the Middle East to their peers in the USA.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Founder PayTM

Indian entrepreneur and founder of the mobile wallet, PayTM, Sharma started the website indiasite.net in 1997 and sold it two years later for $1 million. In 2005, he started One97 Communications which offered mobile content like news, cricket scores, ringtones, jokes and exam results. One97 now is Paytm’s parent company. Having started college at 15 he runs a billion dollar company at age 37.

Vinit Nijhawan

Managing Director, Office Of Technology Development, BU

Serial entrepreneur with a track record of success, including 5 startups in 25 years; as CEO of three, the fourth was acquired and the fifth grew to a 300 people company. He is also a Board of Trustee of TiE Global, a non-profit that fosters entrepreneurship globally. Vinit also teaches an MBA course on Entrepreneurship at BU.

Chancellor George R Blumenthal

ChancellorUC Santa Cruz

George R Blumenthal is University of California Santa Cruz’s 10th Chancellor. Under Chancellor Blumenthal's leadership, the campus in 2013 launched its first comprehensive fundraising campaign, The Campaign for UC Santa Cruz. In addition, he has presided over significant growth in research funding, from $100 million in 2006 to $130 million in 2013.

Prof Venkataraman>

Nobel Laureate

In 2009 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome". He is the current President of the Royal Society, having held the position since November 2015. Since 1999, he has worked as a group leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, UK.

Amit Singhal

Google Fellow and Google Search Scientist

Named one of the smartest people in tech by CNN, elected as fellow to Association of Computing Machinery and National Academy of Engineering, and a Google Fellow, Amit is the man behind Google Search. Currently Senior Vice President at Google, he was given the Outstanding Achievement in Science and Technology Award at The Asian Awards in 2011.

Sanjeev Bhikchandani

Founder Info Edge

Sanjeev is the founder and executive chairman of Info Edge (India) that owns naukri.com, one of India’s largest job portals. He has also set up Quadrangle, an offline executive search engine. He has won the Ernst and Young – Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2008 for Business Transformation. He has also won the Dataquest Pathbreaker Award and the Teacher’s Achievement Award for Business in 2008.

Dr. Ramakrishnan Parameshwaran

Ramakrishnan is a pioneer in the field of research in the interdisciplinary domain of science and spirituality or “evidence-based theology” and works towards the integration of psychiatry and spirituality to obtain better outcomes in healthcare. He is working towards identifying where religious differences stand out drastically, where the boundaries are mixed together, and where they are blurred. He is also a resident at the Center for the Study of World Religions.

MadhavanRamunjam

Partner, Simon – Kucher& Partners and Co-Author

MadhavanRamanujam is a board member and partner at Simon-Kucher& Partners based in its Silicon Valley office. Ramanujam has led more than 125 monetization projects for Internet, software and technology clients, helping bring numerous new products to market. He is also co-author of Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price which illustrates the importance of putting the customers’ willingness to pay at the very core of product design.

“Nat” Rajesh Natarajan

In his current role Rajesh Natarajan is responsible for the strategic direction of Intuit TurboTax technology and product experiences. In his 20-year career in Web scale technology and product development experience, Nat has launched multiple innovative products. Before joining Intuit, he served as vice president of global credit expansion at PayPal where he held multiple senior roles in his eight-year tenure at PayPal, including vice president of global product development and vice president of platform engineering and operations.

Dr. Mohan Prasad

Head API – R&D Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited

Prior to his current role as Head API – R&D at Ranbaxy Laboratories, Dr Mohan Prasad has held positions of increasing responsibilities in the R&D divisions of various Indian Pharma companies. He is Vice President of Indian Society of Chemists and Biologists, Adjunct Professor JamiaHamdard University, New Delhi, Member of European Federation of Biotechnology and Executive Member of Indian Society of Analytical Scientists – Delhi Chapter. He has over twenty publications and more than 160 patents to his credit. His research interests include chemo & regioselective reductions, asymmetric catalysis and insightful process development of significant active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Dr. Arun Purohit

Dr. Arun Purohit spent 21 years at Ranbaxy in various roles as Medical Director and Medical Advisor.His profile included global new product portfolio management including dosage form and API; strategic initiatives and identifying growth areas for the company; guiding the development of a strong-branded pipeline and branded business for Ranbaxy markets and support continuing medical education. He is the General Secretary for the Indian Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and also sits on the advisory board for the Indian Institute of Healthcare Management & Research, Jaipur.

Gopinathan CP

Chief Integrator 361° minds

Gopi sets vision & strategic direction for the company and leads learning & education initiatives. He is the principal facilitator for large L&D interventions.He has facilitated corporate training sessions on a large scale, consulted for companies on strategic matters, coached CEOs, and delivered niche workshops for scientists, entrepreneurs, and parents. He is a strategic advisor to corporates for their visioning, goal setting, and execution goals.He takes personal delight in mentoring people towards high performance and career building goals.

Salman Khan

Founder Khan Academy

Salman Khan is an American educator, entrepreneur, and former hedge fund analyst. He is the founder of the Khan Academy, a free online education platform and an organization with which he has produced over 6,500 video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic subjects, mainly focusing on mathematics and sciences. As of May 2016, the Khan Academy channel on YouTube has more than 2.6 million subscribers and the Khan Academy videos have been viewed more than 840 million times. In 2012, Time named Salman Khan in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Mahesh Murthy

FounderPinstorm

Mr. Mahesh Murthy is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Seedfund. He is also the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Pinstorm Technologies Private Limited. He ran Channel V till 2000 and then founded Passionfund to invest in and guide startups.Mr. Murthy is also invested in Geodesic Limited, Compassbox, EBS Direct, and WebDunia and serves as Director of Netcraft Retail Solutions Private Limited and Innoz Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Ashish Khazanchi

Managing Partner, Enormous Brands

Former creative head of Publicis Ambience Ashish Khazanchirecently launchedEnormous - his own venture along with Ajay Verma, erstwhile chief growth officer of DraftfcbUlka and Vivek Suchanti. Ashish is an industry veteran with more than 20 years in advertising who has won every single creative award including 50 Abby’s and the Cannes Gold. He has been rated one of the ‘Top Twenty Creative People’ by Brand Equity and ‘The Creative People to Watch Out For’ by DNA.

Vishal Gondal

Founder & CEO GoQii

Vishal Gondalis an Indian entrepreneur and angel investor.He is the founder and CEO of GOQii, a fitness technology company, and previously founded the game development and publishing company Indiagames, which he sold to DisneyUTV Digital, The Walt Disney Company (India) in 2011 for $100 million. In 2008, Gondal launched Sweat and Blood Venture group to invest in startups at a seed level. The organization has invested in Instablogs and Docsuggest, among others.

Ganesh Krishnan

Ganesh the founder and Chief Executive Officer of TutorVista, an online tutoring company. He is a serial entrepreneur and has launched four startups with an aggregate capital of ?16 million (US$240,000) and an aggregate exit valuation of $300 million. Ganesh has been busy promoting Growthstory, which is a venture builder entrepreneurship platform to greenfield ventures. His ventures include Bigbasket, Bluestone, Portea, Freshmenu, Dogspot

Akshay Regmi

Portfolio Manager – South AsiaKiva

As Portfolio Manager for South Asia, Akshay is responsible for expanding Kiva’s portfolio in the region and managing the relationship with existing field partners. Akshay was based in Afghanistan for a year, studying the interaction of informal economies of credit with formal microfinance. After completing his MA in International Political Economy from Johns Hopkins University, he worked at the World Bank HQ in Washington DC on private sector development and entrepreneurship support operations.

Dr. Pramod K Verma

Chief Architect, UIDAI

Dr. Pramod leads the overalltechnology and application architecture and development within UIDAI TechnologyUnit.Prior to this, as CTO at Sterling Commerce, he has worked across the organization and customers to evangelize technology and helpsproduct teams make strategic technology and architecture decisions.He began his career as part of the research team at Infosys Technologies and has lead research teams thatconceived, designed, and built an Internet banking module and a powerful web application server as back as1995.

Kiran Shetty

Chief Executive SWIFT

Kiran Shetty is Chief Executive of SWIFT India Domestic Services, a joint venture with the top Indian public and private sector banks. SWIFT delivers high quality domestic financial messaging services to the Indian financial community. Kiran is based out of Mumbai, he manages a product portfolio that caters to critical domestic market infrastructures and market segments across payments, trade, corporate and securities.

Kiran joined SWIFT in 2016 after more than 20 years in the financial services industry, with top Fortune 500 US companies. Prior to SWIFT, Kiran was Managing Director & Regional Vice President, India & South Asia for Western Union, where he was part of the top 100 Global leaders group. He has been recognized with the prestigious National Award for E-Governance (driving financial inclusion), by Government of India in 2016.

Kiran has a degree in Commerce from Delhi University and has completed his Accelerated Management Program from, Indian Business School, Hyderabad, India.

Siddhartha Bhattacharya

Country Director, IndiaACCESS Health

Siddhartha Bhattacharya is responsible for the overall development, management, and leadership of the activities of ACCESS Health International in India. His responsibilities include the establishment of collaborations and management of partnerships with government and the public and private sectors as well as with research and development organizations.

Previously, Siddhartha served as chief operating officer and technology head for the Emergency Management and Research Institute of GVK. The Institute delivers integrated emergency response and technology driven health outreach services to seventeen states and union territories in India through public private partnerships. In prior leadership roles, he has worked with Dell, Inc, (USA), Philips (India), and the government of Kerala in a number of cross functional global assignments. Siddhartha holds a Bachelor's degree with honors in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Rajasthan. He also received his Master's in Business Administration from the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. In addition, Siddhartha received an Executive Scholar certificate in sales and marketing from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Siddhartha is interested in people, projects, and alliances that thrive on rapid change, scale, and globalization. He likes to mentor promising startups in his personal time.

Shankar Maruwada

CEO & Co-founderEkStep

Shankar Maruwada is the CEO and Co-founder of EkStep. Shankar is passionate about addressing social problems at scale through technology based tools. He is an entrepreneur and marketing professional with a wide range of experience working on large scale projects such as the AADHAAR, India’s national identification program, where he was the Head of Demand Generation and Marketing.

Shankar pioneered data analytics in India through, Marketics, a company he co-founded. He is an investor in startups and a mentor to entrepreneurs. He is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad and Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur.

Rama Vedashree

CEO DSCI

Rama Vedashree was Vice President, NASSCOM leading all initiatives in Domestic IT, eGovernance and Smart Cities among others. At NASSCOM, she has also led the Healthcare initiative in partnership with apex Health Sector body, NATHEALTH. She is also anchoring a new initiative of the Industry on making India a global hub for cyber security.

With a rich and varied experience of 28 years in the Industry, she has had long stints at NIIT Technologies, Microsoft and General Electric. Until recently, she was also interim CEO of Data Security Council of India.

Her previous roles include that of Director in Microsoft Global Services, and Vice President, GE India. She has experience in the diverse domains of IT consulting, Strategic Accounts and Business Development, e-Governance projects and Business Development for Infrastructure projects and Health and Water Sectors at GE.

A Gold Medalist from University of Hyderabad, she has also completed an Executive Education program from Harvard, and a short program in High Performance Computing from Cornell University.

In her spare time, she actively participates in Long Distance Runs, and has to her credit many Half Marathons.

Rohan Khara

Director – ProductsMobiKwik

Rohan Khara is Director for Products at MobiKwik, India’s largest independent payments network and mobile wallet, since July 2016. Prior to MobiKwik, Rohan was the Co-founder and COO at Jabber Labs, a podcasting startup that he founded in 2014.

A Stanfort graduate, Rohan started his career with Microsoft and has worked in leadership positions at Quikr, during his career span of over a decade. He also has an engineering degree from R. V. College of Engineering, Bangalore.

Upasana Taku

Co-Founder & Director MobiKwik

Upasana’s mission is to simplify payment acceptance for retailers in India. Her current focus is to bring a million retailers into the MobiKwik payments network. She is also in charge of bank partnerships, business operations, and talent acquisition at MobiKwik. Upasana comes with a strong background in payments as a senior product manager with PayPal in the Silicon Valley and prior to that with HSBC in San Diego, US.

In 2008, Upasana decided to return to India and contribute to the ecosystem back home. The year after she joined MobiKwik as its cofounder. From a handful of early employees to a headcount of around 250, Upasana has been chiefly responsible for holding things together at MobiKwik, keeping the team focused on the goal of building India’s largest independent mobile payments network.

Upasana graduated with Bachelors in Engineering from NIT Jalandhar and holds a Masters in Management Science from Stanford University. She has 13 years of extensive experience in Payments & Financial Services and has been an entrepreneur in India for over 6 years now. Away from web products and startups, Upasana can be found traveling to offbeat destinations or doing triathlons.

Acknowledging her achievements in the tech startup ecosystem of India she was featured by Forbes under "Asia's Women to Watch in 2016".

Safir Anand

Senior PartnerAnand & Anand

Mr Anand is senior partner and head of the trademarks, contractual and commercial IP entertainment and contractual IP. He advises several Fortune 500 companies and acts for over 6,000 clients. His practice areas include trademarks, contractual law, franchising and licensing, character merchandising, advertising and labelling laws, IP audits, IP issues in mergers and acquisitions, and due diligence. Mr Anand has spoken extensively at various conferences, including the Lexis Nexis conference on the importance of IP in mergers and acquisitions; the ACMA conference on IP management through brand protection; and the Brand Licensing conference on negotiating a licence agreement.

Sandeep Dhingra

CTO - Network Consulting - IOTIBM

Sandeep is a Global Network and Information Technology executive with demonstrated success in service, support and software business. With deep networking and IT background, he is currently focused on SDN, NFV and Cloud, driving technology strategy for Telco's and Enterprise customers while building internal capabilities to scale. He is a hands-on leader comfortable in driving high value business with CXO as well as internal strategy with deeply technical engineering teams.

With 25+ years of experience in service delivery, product management and business development, he has been effective in building exceptional teams.

Presently in IBM, Sandeep is leading Global Network Consulting services organization to help our clients transform their network infrastructure and operations.

Previously, in Huawei, leading an elite Center of Innovation team, Sandeep has\d driven $200M+ business in the first year of joining. He built a strong SDN/NFV consulting practice with a customer centric Transformation Program for Telcos that included Business, Technology and Operations (DevOps) consulting. He was also responsible for OSS Open Innovation strategy with Open Standards bodies/projects such as ONF, ONLAB, ONOS, ODL,OPNFV, MEF-LSO, OPEN STACK.

With over 15 years in Cisco Systems Inc, Sandeep built strong services capabilities and directed development of 15+ new service products/offerings, cloud/XaaS based migration delivery model, services automation. Earlier in his career, he provided technical consulting solutions to over 100 large customers across the globe.

His experience is truly global with customers in all continents and diverse teams in US, Europe, Asia and Middle East.

Poet at heart, his leadership style is motivational to drive exceptional results.

Bala Parthasarathy

CEO & Co-FounderMoneyTap

In stealth mode of my latest startup; In the past, co-founded 3 successful and 1 failed technology startup; Co-founded Angelprime (now Prime Venture), a Seed Fund, where we worked with awesome entrepreneurs from EZEtap, SmartOwner, HackerEarth, Happay, Synup and more!

Started Snapfish from scratch and helped build it to a $300M revenue & profitable business spanning 22 countries, sold it to HP in 2005; Volunteered for UIDAI Project in India before starting a technology incubator with 2 other co-founders; Professional interests are in mobile, Internet ecommerce entrepreneurship & running International businesses with focus in Europe and Asia; Personal interests include hiking, traveling, scuba diving, skiing, reading, yoga and meditation.Traveled to more than 80 countries; crossed the Sahara desert, climbed Kilimanjaro; trekked in Himalayas, Andes, Sierras, Alps; fluent in 3 languages and working knowledge of Spanish & French;

Specialties: COO responsibilities including P&L management, Operations, R&D in internet or ecommerce businesses; International business development and expansion in Europe & Asia Pacific including Japan; International M&A

Harish Hande

Co-FounderSELCO

“Harish Hande is an engineer and renewable energy entrepreneur with over 20 years of grassroots experience in meeting requirements of underserved communities. He is the co-founder of SELCO India, and under his leadership SELCO reached 220,000+ households across 6 Indian states, while focusing on Innovation and Ecosystem building, for which he was awarded the Magsaysay Award in 2011”

Harish, a graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and a Masters and PhD from University of Massachusetts, US, returned to India to start SELCO in 1994-95 after experiencing benefits of solar energy in rural areas of Dominican Republic and Sri Lanka. Having installed the first 1000 home lighting systems on his own and over 2,10,000 households now through his company SELCO India, Harish is recognized as a pioneer of rural energy service across the globe. He and his company have received many national and international awards including the Ashden award (2005 and 2007), The tech museum award (2005), Khemka Social entrepreneur of the year 2007 and the Financial Times –Arcelor Mittal Boldness in Business award 2009. Harish was one of the 21 CEOs invited to meet US President Barack Obama during his visit to Mumbai in 2014.”

Prof. Sadagopan

DirectorIIITB

Professor Sadagopan, Director of IIIT-Bangalore, is a product of Madras University, India and Purdue University, USA. He taught for 25+ years at IIT Kanpur, IIM Bangalore, IIT Madras and IIIT-Bangalore in addition to short teaching assignments at RUTGERS, USA and AIT, Bangkok.

He has authored seven books, several book chapters and papers.

He is a Fellow of IEE (UK) and Computer Society of India. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, ACM and AIS.

He consults widely and lectures extensively on all aspects of IT. He serves on the boards of Vignyani Industries Limited (A fully owned subsidiary of BEML Limited) National Stock Exchange, Indian Overseas Bank, National Payment Corporation of India, Mumbai, BEML Ltd, Bangalore also served on Bharat Electronics, Neyveli Lignite Corporation and Indian Renewable Energy Agency as well as several Universities / Institutes - IIIT-Gwalior, Jain University, IDRBT, IBAB, ISIM, IIIT Bhubaneshwar and IIIT-Delhi.

He serves as a Member of Karnataka Knowledge Commission, Chief Minister's Vision Group on IT, NASSCOM Regional Council, Indian Electronics Semiconductor Association (IESA) Executive Council and ACM India Council. He is the Chair of IEEE Computer Society, Bangalore Chapter.

Prof. Rishikesh Krishnan

Director & Professor Of StrategyIIM Indore

Rishikesha Krishnan is an author, columnist and professor of management who focuses on strategy, innovation, and education. He is listed in the Thinkers50 India list of most influential management thinkers from India.

His book 8 Steps to Innovation: Going from Jugaad to Excellence (co-authored with Vinay Dabholkar) won the Best Book Award for 2013-14 from the Indian Society for Training & Development. His earlier book From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation: The Challenge for India proposed a blueprint for how India can enhance its innovation output.

Prof. Krishnan is currently the Director of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore. From 1996-2013, he was on the faculty at IIM Bangalore, where he held the Jamuna Raghavan Chair in Entrepreneurship from 2007 to 2010. He was educated at IIT Kanpur, Stanford University and IIM Ahmedabad.

Sachin Malhan

DirectorAshoka Fellowships

Sachin Malhan works at the global non-profit Ashoka where he is the Executive Director of its Changemakers global program. The program uses the knowledge and network of Ashoka - ranked amongst the top ten global non-profits in the world - to convene and connect high-potential social innovators and rapidly accelerate the rate of change in specific areas of impact.

Before Ashoka Sachin was an entrepreneur based in India where he co-founded three ventures - Inclusive Planet, a venture focused on greater literary access for India and the world’s visually impaired, which succeeded in effecting national policy change; Law School Tutorials, the leading law test prep outfit that became part of edu-corporate CL Educate in 2005 and an Indian School of Business case study in 2009, and Rainmaker, the leading online learning and talent platform for the legal industry. For his work in technology, media and education, Sachin became an INK Fellow in 2010.

In his ventures Sachin has worked intimately with young people, social innovation, technology and learning, and been repeatedly amazed by the power of young people to make change. Sachin is a graduate of the National Law School of India University in Bangalore.

Satish Mugulavalli

Director of TechnologyYourNest Venture Capital

Satish is the Director of Technology at YourNest Venture Capital, an early stage fund focused on deep technology. He is focused on spotting trends; innovators and helping them build global organizations.

Satish is a technology entrepreneur and an advisor and mentor for several high technology, hardware/IOT startups, incubators and accelerators. He built partner eco-system of silicon vendors, part suppliers, industrial designers, prototyping and high volume contract manufacturers to facilitate rapid prototyping and mass production.

He was most recently, Co-founder and Chief Architect of Verismo Networks based out of Bangalore and Silicon Valley where he conceptualized and built the industry’s first Over-the-top Internet Video platform delivering broadcast and on-demand content directly to a legacy Television.

He has over 20 years of experience in architecting high performance systems in voice, video and data networking products, Internet platforms and services. He has built products and deployed them in more than 150 countries. He has contributed to standard bodies and consortiums and holds patents in digital media and networking. He career includes leadership roles in Teneoris Networks, Ishoni Networks and Multi-Tech.

He is an engineering degree holder in Computer Science from Mysore University and is a charter member of TIE Bangalore.

Prof. Soumyo Mukherji

ProfessorIIT Bombay

Soumyo Mukherji did his B.Tech. in Instrumentation Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur); MS in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State University (Fort Collins, USA) and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, USA). After his PhD he joined IIT Bombay in 1997, where he is now a Professor in the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering . He was the Head of the Centre for Research in Nanotechnology and Sciences at IIT Bombay from 2010-2013, and is currently the Dean of Student Affairs at IIT Bombay. He also holds an Institute Chair Professorship. His research interests are in sensors and instruments for widescale deployment in resource constrained locales for environmental and medical applications, mobile health, security, etc., and instrumentation in general. He has dabbled a bit in the entrepreneurship domain as well, having been a partner in a incubation process for a company (Nanosniff),

Tapish Bhatt

Vice PresidentCIIE, IIM Ahmedabad

Tapish takes care of the IIMAvericks program, an early stage incubation program for IIMA students & alumni at CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad. Through this program, CIIE has helped 70+ students take up the entrepreneurial path over the last five years. Prior to this, Tapish was leading IoT Program Management at Schneider Electric based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tapish has experience in consulting, public policy & entrepreneurship and is passionate about technology & innovation. Tapish holds a Masters degree from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, where he was named the Emerging Markets Scholar.

Dr. Anindya Chatterjee

Professor Of Mechanical EngineeringIIT Kanpur

I am a mechanical engineer with an undergraduate degree from IIT Kharagpur, masters degrees in applied mechanics and applied mathematics from the University of Florida, a PhD from Cornell University, and postdoc work at Penn State University. I spent a year, just out of college, working for Telco (now Tata Motors) in Jamshedpur. I joined the Indian Institute of Science in 2000, moved to IIT Kharagpur in 2009, and to IIT Kanpur in 2012.

I have guided eight PhD students to completion and authored or coauthored several journal publications on various topics (my CV). I have also worked on some consulting projects that I found interesting.

I have taught courses in dynamics, control, nonlinear oscillations, and undergraduate statics and strength of materials.

Dr. Arun Purohit

Former CEORanbaxy Laboratories Limited

Dr. Arun Purohit spent 21 years at Ranbaxy in various roles as Medical Director and Medical Advisor. His profile included global new product portfolio management including dosage form and API; strategic initiatives and identifying growth areas for the company; guiding the development of a strong-branded pipeline and branded business for Ranbaxy markets and support continuing medical education. He is the General Secretary for the Indian Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and also sits on the advisory board for the Indian Institute of Healthcare Management & Research, Jaipur.

Deepangshu Dev Sarmah

Editor in ChiefAutoTech Review

An astute and result-oriented professional with about 16 years of experience in journalism, including 13 years of in-depth coverage of the Indian automotive sector. Experience of managing a wide bandwidth of products developed in conjunction with the magazines I’ve been associated with, with demonstrated initiatives.

Presently associated with Auto Tech Review as its Founder Editor-in-Chief, driving editorial excellence with quality content for pint, web and live events (conferences & seminars). I also Head the Professional Publishing (B2B) division at Springer Nature India, with additional responsibility of Dentistry India, a magazine focussed on the dental community and industry in India.

A keen planner and strategist with proven skills in conceptualising, managing and executing new projects and products, I’m able to work on own initiatives and as part of a team. I possess recognised proficiency in development and implementation of business strategies and product positioning, plans and policies. A team leader with proven team building and management abilities, I have extensive experience in building new strategies around teams – new and old.

I’ve moderated panel discussions and thought leadership roundtables at various internal and external events and conferences.

A keen political observer, I’m a sports fanatic and an experimental chef, and someday wish to pursue my dream of being a nursery school teacher.

I V Rao

Executive Advisor, Engineering And DirectorMaruti Suzuki India Ltd.

Inala Veerabhadra Rao, popularly known as IV Rao, is currently heading the Engineering vertical in Maruti Suzuki India Limited as Managing Executive officer.

Mr. Rao looks after Engineering, Research, Design & Development function along with Quality Assurance and Service functions

He has completed his graduation in Mechanical Engineering from Osmania University and Masters in Mechanical Engineering from IIT-Kanpur and started his career with KG Khosla and co in 1979. He joined Maruti in 1983 and has spearheaded the R&D activities at Maruti Suzuki.

In his 26 years career at Maruti Suzuki, Mr Rao has made significant contribution in different roles and positions in Product Development and Manufacturing Engineering functions. Under his leadership, Maruti R&D has grown from strength to strength and has developed capability for new model & facelift development, alternate fuel product development and new technology development.
Mr Rao is nominated as a Director in the Board of Directors of Maruti’s joint venture company Bharat Seats Limited.

With his vast experience of technology development and understanding of Indian context, Mr. Rao plays an important role and holds key positions in different industry/ government bodies, such as:

Executive Council member – SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile manufacturers

Irene Umar

Irene started her career in Standard Chartered Bank Indonesia as an international graduate, which later brought her to expand her investment banking career in UAE, India, and Singapore. Upon her return to Indonesia, she has started her own business and supported her alma mater i.e. President University as the foundation’s treasurer and
strategic planning director. In addition, she is also the founder of Discovery Nusantara Capital – a venture capital fund. As an entrepreneur and leader, one of her greatest challenges is the quality of human capital.

Further, With ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) fast becoming an everyday reality, she is extremely concerned about the ability of Indonesian workforce to compete.Hence, along with her co-founders, she founded ONE Indonesia which aims to (a) use Big Data applications to unlock the nation’s education issues and (b) to create an ecosystem for all concerned parties to cooperate and to collaborate so that Indonesia’s education goals could be accomplished and Indonesians would be ready for the increasingly competitive world.

Dr. Vinnie Jauhari

Director Education AdvocacyMicrosoft

Prior to her role in Microsoft, Dr Vinnie has worked as Director and Professor of Strategy at IIMT, Gurgaon and Region Lead for HP Labs Open Innovation Office for India. She has over 19 years of experience which pans across industry and academic assignments. She has authored twelve books and has several papers in international journals. She is the Founding Editor of Journal of Services Research and Journal of Technology Management for Growing Economies.

Jay Krishnan

CEOT-Hub

Jay Krishnan is the CEO of T-Hub, the largest incubator in the country for startups and a serial entrepreneur.
He was the founder of three different startups across the world, in the IoT and energy management spaces.
With over 15 years of startup and corporate experience, Jay has managed P&L across business units.

As a C-level executive, he has run businesses in companies like Aditya Birla Minacs, Cisco systems, Juniper Networks and Intel Brooktrout Dialogic Inc.

Ravinder has consulted and managed projects with diverse streams of segments like govt, manufacturing, R&D, Media, IT & ITES, Telcos and Retail customers. He has been part of empaneled consultants for India Smart City Mission and Delhi Mumbai Infrastructure Corridor (DMIC) projects. He has 2 patent applications submitted in the areas of Data center and Security.

Ravinder is a regular speaker in national and international forums around Internet of Everything and Smart Communities. Some of his articles have been published in leading publications.

Pranay Gupta

Co-Founder91springboard

Pranay Gupta is the Co-Founder of 91springboard, the first and the biggest coworking hubs company in India. They have hubs across Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

An IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, he was previously Joint CEO at CIIE, IIM Ahmedabad's incubator where he was instrumental in setup and running of Power of Ideas, iAccelerator, MentorEdge etc. He was leading the Internet & Mobile domain activities for them and had lead investments in 40+ startups that have resulted in multiple exits.

Pranay was one of the first investors in AlmaConnect and has been an invaluable mentor and evangelist from early days of the company.

Rubish Gupta

Co-FounderAlma Connect

Rubish is CTO at Alma Connect and handles tech product and infrastructure. AlmaConnect is a social network based on private alumni networks focused on helping an alum / student get trusted help from his/her alumni network. Help ranging from getting referral for jobs, advice for careers, recommendations for services, introductions, fund raising to just asking if anyone is travelling from New York to Delhi in the next week and can carry a small parcel. Institutes can host their official alumni networks on AlmaConnect for strengthening their alumni relations and leveraging the network for increasing placements & branding.

Sumit D Chowdhury

CEOGaia Smart Cities

Dr. Sumit Chowdhury is a global thought leader in the field of Smart Cities, Telecom, IOT & Information analytics. His company, Gaia Smart Cities, is creating IOT based wide-area telecom solutions for cities, industries and citizens – like Smart Metering, asset tracking, industrial automation and smart health. He is also the Program Director for PMU for Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Initiative) and heading their IT initiatives with the Ministry of Urban Development. He is working closely with multiple cities in India’s 100 Smart Cities Initiative.

He is a business leader, and an entrepreneur having invested in multiple startup companies. He has been a CIO of several telecom companies in India, been a Partner with KPMG Consulting in US & Australia. He is on the board on one listed entity.

He is a Visiting Faculty teaching a course on Smart Cities at Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and an expert with TM Forum Smart Cities Global Network. He heads in Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, Smart Cities Group.

Sumit is a graduate of IIT Kanpur and MS and Ph.D from Carnegie Mellon University in Information Systems Management from the School of Urban Planning and Administration.

He is the author of a bestselling career management book, 'Rules of the Game'. He is also a TEDx speaker, an avid painter, a trained musician and an active marathon runner and cyclist.

Sanjay Sethi

CEOShopClues.com

Sanjay Sethi is the Co-founder and CEO at ShopClues.com. He is highly regarded in the industry as a product visionary and a marketplace expert with proficiency in building multifaceted environments in the field of e-commerce. As the Co-founder of the company, Sanjay aims to deliver a pleasurable shopping experience for consumers through the advanced and user-friendly online platform.

An alumnus of Banaras Hindu University, Sanjay holds a B.Tech Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He further went on to pursue a course in Software Technology from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi). He has enjoyed a fruitful career of over 20 years in the internet product space, including e-commerce marketplaces, online payments, operations and trade logistics.

Prior to his appointment as the CEO, Sanjay served as the Vice President (Products) in ShopClues since the company’s inception in July 2011. In his previous position, Sanjay’s role involved providing necessary tools and processes essential to produce and operate an efficient online marketplace. Before co-founding India’s first and now largest managed marketplace, Sanjay served as the Global Product Head for Shipping & Logistics, Payments & Billing at eBay Inc. in Silicon Valley. He has also worked with other reputed companies including IIS Infotech, HCL Perot Systems, Tradebeam and Steel Authority of India Limited.

Sanjay has been felicitated with a number of awards and honours for his entrepreneurial achievements such as the “Distinguished Alumni Award” at the IIT-BHU Alumni Excellence Awards Ceremony. He has also held the CEO of the Year award with Radhika Ghai Aggarwal at CEO Awards 2016.

Pradeep Gupta

Chairman, CyberMedia & Global Trustee, TiE

Pradeep Gupta is the Chairman of the CyberMedia Group, South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with brands like Dataquest, PCQuest, Voice&Data, DARE, CIOL, Global Services, etc. CyberMedia is a public company. CyberMedia is executing India’s first Electropreneur Park, an incubation centre for Electronics start-ups funded by the Government of India.

Pradeep is also an Angel investor and has mentored over 100 start-ups. He is the co-founder of Indian Angel Network, Asia’s largest angel network with more than 300 members that has done over 70 deals. Currently IAN invests in 20-25 deals each year. Some successful exits of IAN include Druvaa Software, StayZilla etc.

Pradeep is also the Chair of the IIT Alumni Trust, the sponsors of IvyCap Ventures Trust Fund-I, a $40 mn fund that invests in medium scale businesses.

Pradeep is a global trustee of TiE, the world’s largest entrepreneurial ecosystem with 12,000 members, including over 2,500 charter members in 60 chapters across 17 countries.

Pradeep was the GP of India’s first angel fund Infinity Ventures 15 years ago which had angel investments in companies like India Bulls and India Games, both of which were highly successful exits.

He is on the Board of the IIT Delhi and IIM Kolkata incubators and on the Advisory Board of STPI Gurgaon.

He has been the past President of PanIIT India and Association of Indian Magazines. He is/has been on the Boards of IIT Mandi, Indian Newspaper Society, UTI AMC and its subsidiary UTI Capital etc.

He is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni award of IIT Delhi and the Helen Keller award for working in the disability sector.

Pradeep is an Engineer from IIT Delhi (1975) and an MBA from IIM Calcutta (1977).

Christopher Hanvey

General Manager Genesis Global School

Mr. Christopher Hanvey began his career with CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) in 1982. He went on to becoming a key member of the Computers in Schools project in 1985-87 at Eiko Computers in Delhi. This project saw the roll out of computers in private schools for learning purposes for the first time, all over Delhi and the North. This effort included working closely with experts to develop age-appropriate educational software.

He then went on to do a Design & Technology project working closely with designers at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad on ready-made components for commercial spaces. Later, in 1991, as Branch Head in Mumbai with Amtrex Ambience Limited, he was responsible for establishing market supremacy of the Amtrex-Hitachi line of air-conditioning solutions in Maharashtra and Goa. This experience took him to Indonesia for 5 years in a similar field.

On return in 2007, he joined Kasiga School, Dehradun as General Manager for 4 years, simultaneously teaching the IGCSE programme. He joined the much-awarded Genesis Global School, Noida in 2011, and spends most of his time studying aspects that enrich and make curriculums accessible, particularly the role of technology in learning at K 12 Schools.

Dr. R Shivaraman

Founder & Director Accendere

Dr. R. Shivaraman, PhD (Magnetic Data Storage Devices) spearheads the Research and Innovation verticals of Accendere. Having completed his Masters in Nanotechnology prior to his PhD, Shiva derives his expertise in a broad range of topics from the time spent in top research facilities such as Carnegie Mellon University, UWA, Curtin, and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre

Shiva’s research interests include nano magnetic storage devices, spintronics, controlled release and drug delivery systems for hepatic cancer and dabbles with robotics and non-euclidean geometry. He has over 30 international journal publications, patents and has delivered talks in dozens of international conferences. He has been awarded several prestigious recognitions such as the Young Scientist Research Award, BRNS, DAE and Australian Visiting Fellowship, Australian Academy of Science. He is on the advisory board of several top Institutions around the country.

Varun Aggarwal

Co-founder & CTO Aspiring Minds

Varun Aggarwal co-founded Aspiring Minds with his brother Himanshu Aggarwal in 2008 and together the two have built it into the world’s leading job credentialing company. As CTO, Varun oversees delivery, operations, product design, research and new initiatives. Under his guidance, the research group at aspiring Minds has developed the world's first machine learning based programming assessment, the world's first automated test of motor skills and the only scalable way of spoken English assessment.

Varun is a recognized expert on developing and applying statistical learning and optimization techniques to real world problems, including circuit modeling and design, parallel processing and network coding. His work has been published in more than 20 technical publications and he has five US patents pending, including his work for the algorithms he developed for Aspiring Minds.

He is the founder of the MIT India Reading Group, a platform for collaborative research on socio economic issues in India, which has completed more than 65 meetings. He is also the co-founder of CURE, an organization working against hazing (ragging) in India.

Varun was awarded the HUMIES award in 2006 for developing algorithms that mimic human intelligence and the AWA award for his article on Bose's contribution to the invention of radio. He has been a prominent speaker and panelist at Harvard University, MIT, INSEAD and IBM Research Center (NYC).

Varun completed his Bachelors of Engineering from NSIT, University of Delhi and holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.

Meenu Grover

Vice President, Global Portfolio & Strategy Jubilant Lifesciences

Meenu Grover is a Portfolio Management, Strategy & BD professional with over 23 years in the Pharmaceutical Industry. She has handled key roles including Director Global Marketing in Ranbaxy and Director Global Marketing in Sun Pharma. She was also Research Director in Smartanalyst prior to joining Ranbaxy.

Rajiv Seth

Pro Vice Chancellor TERI University

Dr Rajiv Seth is an Aerospace Engineer by training. Having spent 27 years in the Indian Air Force, he has worked on various types of aero engines and has been involved in technical evaluation, field testing and technology transfer. He has been with the TERI University for the last thirteen years and, as the Registrar of the University, has been instrumental in the establishment of the University and the post-graduate programmes it offers. He has been actively involved in the curriculum development of the various courses. He is responsible for the overall administration of the University. As a faculty member in the Department of Business Sustainability, he teaches courses in Finance to students of the MBA programs. His current research interests are in the areas of financing of renewable energy projects, risk management, and use of weather derivatives as a hedging tool for weather related risks.

Alak Kumar Buragohain

Vice-Chancellor Dibrugarh University

Was the Founder Head and Professor, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tezpur University, Tezpur- 784 028, Assam

Served as an Associate Professor, Division of Life Science, Institute of Advance Studies in Science and Technology (IASST) (A Department of Science and Technology Institution, Government of India Institute), Guwahati, Assam, India

Was the Head, Department of Botany and Biotechnology, Tocklai Experimental Station, Tea Research Association, Jorhat, Assam, India during 2002-2003

Founder Head, ONGC Centre for Petroleum Biotechnology at Tezpur University

Chairperson of the Students Welfare Committee (equivalent to Dean, Students Welfare) at Tezpur Central University for more than two terms.

Served as a Reader, Department of Botany, Gauhati University, Assam, India

Served as members and Chairpersons in many Committees, Board of Studies of Central Universities of the North East and the UGC

Punya Salila Srivastava

Master of Public Management (2011), University of Maryland, College Park, USA. MSc Physics (1993), St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. BSc (Honours) Physics (1991), St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi.

Ambardeep

Associate Vice President Shopclues.com

Ambar is a senior product leader in mobile and ecommerce space; currently working as Associate Vice President at Shopclues.com. As the head of product for buyer and customer experience, Ambar is responsible for managing all aspects of product including strategy, building teams and executing go to market.

He has considerable experience in building ecommerce marketplaces and is an expert in building scalable products for delivering delightful online and offline experiences to consumers. He is passionate about data science and incorporates NLP and ML in products to help solve complex problems at scale like personalisation, search, customer loyalty and retention.

He is an engineering graduate from NSIT and completed his Master’s degree in management from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Vincent Quah

Business Development Lead Amazon Web Services

Vincent has more than 25 years of experience working in the education (K12 and tertiary), high performance computing, life science, learning and healthcare industries. From an IT perspective, he has held roles in content development, project management, consulting, solution development, sales, business development, operations management, marketing and programs management. He has worked in major MNCs, primarily focused in the education and research industry and have led successful teams to deliver strong business outcomes.

Vincent is the Business Development Lead, Education, Research and Not For Profit, Asia Pacific at Amazon Web Services.

Dr. Vijay Kumar Saraswat

Member, NITI Aayog & Former Secretary Defence R&D

Dr Vijay Kumar Saraswat, India’s most gifted scientist and an accomplished researcher with more than four decades of experience spaning over several fields and areas in both basic and applied sciences of defence research. Apart from being a scientist, he is a rare combination of an innovator, technologist and visionary.

Born at Gwalior on 25 May 1949, Dr Saraswat completed his engineering from Gwalior; Master of Engineering from IISc Bangalore followed by Ph.D from Osmania University.

During his illustrious career, from Scientist to Scientific Adviser to Defence Minister, Director to Director General DRDO and Secretary to Dept of Defence R&D, Dr Saraswat has been credited with development of Liquid Propulsion Rocket Engines and missiles namely PRITHVI, DHANUSH, PRAHAAR indigenously. He is the principal architect of the Ballistic Missile Defence programme which included major technology breakthroughs. The successive interceptions of incoming target ballistic missiles at Exo and Endo atmospheres are a testimony to his dedicated efforts and exploitation of limited technological resources. With this India joined the select nations that have the capability to develop BMD systems

Ramky

FounderSports Mechanics

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SportsMechanics, the current performance analysts of multiple Indian teams, including cricket, hockey,
boxing, athletics, weight lifting, table tennis, volleyball & squash, is a sports technology company
headquartered at Chennai. Our primary focus is Team and Player Performance Analysis and other value
added services to sports organisations with regard to fan engagement. We have been specializing in this
field in a wide range of sports. With our experience and expertise we have worked with many national
teams and federations on a wide range of services over the years.

Ramakrishnan (Ramky) was a passionate cricketer during his playing days. He had another passion that
few knew – technology. And this combination is what made him aspire to create solutions that will
enable teams & players to perform to their best. While our country has been the land of many
technological innovations for many industries, sports has been one that has been left behind. Ramky
wanted this changed. He wanted India to shine in the arena of sports technology as well just as we do in
other arenas. Post his playing days, this passion made him start SportsMechanics – typical silicon valley
style – from his garage. Started in 2006 with 4 employees, SportsMechanics is now a team of 55. It has
grown to a stage where many people consider SportsMechanics as a dream destination.

SportsMechanics has been in the space of sports technology from 2006. Since then we have managed to
integrate the world of sports with technology to provide feedback to players, coaches, team
managements, fans and administrators with increased speed, accuracy and conciseness. It all started
with Ramky’s dream of bringing in scientific methods for coaching purposes. When the coaching
methodologies were taken stock of, it was shocking to note that not much had changed from the
yesteryears. As the game has become more athletic, and training methodologies for physical fitness
have improved drastically, why not the skill acquisition & coaching part? With increased competition
and the nature of cricket itself changing, it was imperative that scientific methodologies need to be
introduced sooner than later to ensure that our young cricketers are also coached the right way. It was
this thought process that made Ramky take up video analysis in a major way. Starting with simple video
analysis, Ramky kept innovating and introduced many technology-based solutions to make the entire
process smoother and more efficient. Slowly, video-based performance analysis was done for players
and one such initial break was the MRF Pace foundation. After that, SportsMechanics got the
opportunity to be the ‘performance analysts’ with the Indian Cricket Team – first time such a word was
ever used! Since joining the Indian cricket team in 2003, the performances of the team has become more consistent and has been of the rise – winning the T20 world cup, reaching #1 ranking in tests &
winning the ODI world cup. In addition to cricket, SportsMechanics forayed into other sports by working
with 5 Indian contingents at the Olympic Games.

Another off-shoot of SportsMechanics is the SportsMentor.tv platform. The platform itself aims to
bridge the gap between the player and his coach. Today we are in a world where millions of dollars of
business is done using the internet & other technologies. If so much can be achieved in the sphere of
business, why not in sports? SM.tv intends to bring the entire sporting community under one virtual roof
where knowledge exchange and learning happens. The platform offers e-learning capabilities to players,
Coaches and Institutions to effectively govern, manage, analyze, and report development and goal
achievement for individual players and the team as a whole. Upcoming cricketers will be able to choose
a mentor from the SM panel and get advice from them. With many more features like a training
scheduling calendar, personal channel where a cricketer can broadcast these videos to his community of
people, and so on, SM intends to be a holistic solution to an aspiring cricketer rather than just be an
online coaching manual. The objective was to come up with a platform which offers a cricketer all the
necessary tools to hone his skills and improve in an accelerated manner. The platform has been built for
the benefit of the entire cricketing fraternity by a group of cricket fanatics.

Today, the solutions provided by SportsMechanics to teams (starting from the Indian cricket team to
many IPL teams), organisations & players is appreciated world over. It is noteworthy that many premier
institutions (like ICC & SAI) and premier coaches consider the solutions provided by SportsMechanics to
be the best in the world. A dream of converging 2 passions – technology and sports – is a journey. But it
can be said with a lot of confidence that Ramky & SportsMechanics are on enroute to achieving their
dream!

Surya Putchala

Global Lead, Big Data analyticsCappius Technologies

Surya, provided thought leading consulting solutions in the areas of Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Data Management and Analytics to Fortune 500 Clients over the last 2 decades. He achieved demonstrable results for many clients through consulting and solving complex decision making environments. Currently the vision behind the comprehensive customer experience management platform called CXP and a Data Science Platform called - "ZettaMine". Earlier, he architected commercial Analytical Applications for Product MDM (epaCUBE) and Procurement Optimization (SolPro). He has helped many large System Integration programs achieve productivity benefits through creating smart solutions and accelerators.

As a country, India has been innovating over the ages. History is replete with instances of innovation by the society at large - from the discover of zero to Panini’s Ashtadhaya and more recently Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha. While Brexit is a recent occurrence, India managed to gain independence 70 years ago without firing a single shot through an idea which was transferred from one person to the next to create a veritable movement. Sanskrit is till today the only language that is closest to machine coded, programmable language. However, our innovations did not give rise to products and services that can impact the global market and thus give rise to wealth for the nation. From a point where India contributed over 27% of the world’s GDP about 350 years ago, we slipped to less than 2% in the years between 1750 to 1950. But I can say with conviction that over the last 70 years we are back and our future is even brighter. This phenomenon was set into motion in the year 2000 when the world realized the potential of India , and the credit is largely ascribed to Y2K. Over the last 15 years we have come a long way from a couple of million dollars to a nearly 300billion dollar IT industry. We are today poised at a very interesting juncture in the history of evolution of the region where we see innovation giving rise to home grown global products such as PayTM and InMobi that have the power to impact the world. I firmly believe that in the next 15 years, innovation will propel India to achieve a massive increase in the GDP and influence global markets and industry academia collaboration will form the basis for this growth. I believe that MeltingPot2020 and WAIN will play a major part in this transformational story of India reaching the heights of innovation and in the process moving from a third world country to a first world country within the next couple of years.

SAMSUNG – T-HUB - CL PARTNER TO IGNITE THE SPARK OF INNOVATION IN YOUNG MINDS

Samsung is partnering with T-HUB and CL EDUCATE to create young innovators in 105 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNV) across the country through CL Educate’s signature Conceptual Research Experience (CRE). The project aims to inculcate creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration skills in students, which are required to excel in the 21st century. This initiative will prepare leaders of tomorrow and make them application-oriented so that they can apply their knowledge in different situations and deliver solutions which can be utilised for social or commercial purposes. The higher level goal is also to bring a shift in the mindset of educators and students in government schools, and show that project-based learning could lead to personal and professional development of the students.

Features include:

Enabling students of Grades 8 & 9, to become active learners, who can apply their knowledge to identify problems that impact their surroundings and provide innovative solutions.

Empowering school teachers to become creators of sustainable innovation ecosystems in their schools.

Driving the culture of raising young innovators in government schools and serving as exemplary role models for other institutions.

The project starts with indentifying 105 JNVs in India whose leadership are progressive and forward-thinking. The school leaders are provided orientation on the projects, its vision, expectations, training method and delivery of prototypes. Around the same time, Research Aptitude Test (RAT) is conducted within the school. Top 10 teachers and Top 100 students from the School are selected for the project from the school. RAT is used to test the research aptitude, Reading/Writing ability, Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation level of at the start of the program.
CL’s Research Mentor works with the school leadership to identify a Lead Mentor from the School, a promising subject teacher who can serve as a role model for other teachers and students participating in the project from the school. The research mentor from CL, lead mentor from the school, other teachers responsible for mentoring and the students work in the tripartite collaboration model as shown in the figure below.

IIT – A place which not only focuses on making men as engineers, scientists, doctors, merchants, theologians but also as men of high character, probity and honour, whose conduct through life will show they bear the hall-mark of a great University. - The Founder, IIT-BHU

The University itself is portrayed as a technical hub addressing the various needs of the research inclined. Many activities pertaining to science and humanity have been planned and executed from the onset resulting in a highest position in the University ranking when compared globally.
The focus toward research for a University can be gauged by its research outputs. Research outputs could take any form starting from chapters to publications. There is a saying by Somerset Maugham, noted English novelist - “We don’t write because we want to, we write because we have to”
As an attestation of the above statement, IIT BHU is committed towards being a leading research institution by publishing 788 papers since Jan 2106 which also includes papers stemming from 40 International Collaborations. This prestigious Institute recently joined hands with Accendere, an edtech startup committed to promoting research culture among all stakeholders in the Society.

Accendere, a research incubation startup which is part of the $200 million CL Educate education conglomerate, works with institutions on fostering innovation by developing platforms, bringing in industrial funding, setting up innovation labs, encouraging and assisting in scientific research process, and in enhancing productivity in terms of research publications, patents, prototyping and commercialization of products, spin off ventures etc.
As part of Accendere’s research engagement with IITBHU, 300 students from across 3 departments, namely Pharmaceutics, Biochemical and Biomedical have been shortlisted from over 1200 students to be a part of this prestigious industry linked initiative. The students along with 30 young faculty will form the core inter disciplinary research group focused on undertaking industry friendly research and producing tangible outputs for the sponsoring corporate. This collaboration is expected to bring out a revolutionary change in research decorum thereby helping the young generation to gain knowledge in all possible directions. The students of the Bachelors program express great passion and are quite patriotic towards science. A developing nation like India should shower special attention both qualitative and quantitatively toward the youth as the nation’s fortunes completely rely on the next generation. One of key aspects of the engagement, would be the possible linkages formed between these young research clusters and the industry such as Sun Pharma and others, allowing students to take up research relevant to concerned industry, with back to back agreements in place for technology transfer, IP licensing and even student recruitment ensuring benefits to the students, researchers, institution and the industry.

Niti Ayog has selected 257 schools across India to set up Atal Tinkering Labs (ATL). Under the aegis of the Atal Innovation Mission, the vision of this program is to “Cultivate one Million children in India as Neoteric Innovators”. In the long run, the program has targeted setting up 500 ATLs across the country.

According to the Niti Ayog website, key features of ATL are as follows:

“ATL is a work space where young minds can give shape to their ideas through hands on do-it-yourself mode; and learn innovation skills. Young children will get a chance to work with tools and equipment to understand the concepts of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). ATL would contain educational and learning ‘do it yourself’ kits and equipment on – science, electronics, robotics, open source microcontroller boards, sensors and 3D printers and computers. Other desirable facilities include meeting rooms and video conferencing facility.
In order to foster inventiveness among students, ATL can conduct different activities ranging from regional and national level competitions, exhibitions, workshops on problem solving, designing and fabrication of products, lecture series etc. at periodic intervals.”

INNOVATION AGREEMENT WITH Su-Kam POWER SYSTEMS LIMITED TO SET UP SUKAM CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE

CL Educate has signed an agreement with Su-Kam Power Systems Limited, India’s largest power solutions company to enable cutting edge research and start up incubation in universities in the area of power electronics. Under the aegis of the WAIN platform, covenants of this agreement include:

1) Su-Kam Research Fellowships: identifying meritorious students doing exemplary research in power electronic, Solar and LED

2) Su-Kam Centres of Excellence: Four Centres of Excellence to be set-up on identified WAIN campuses. Campus identification, CoE creation, program management and review will be done by the CL Educate innovation team.

MoU between CL Educate New Delhi and Chennai Institute of Technology (CIT), Chennai:
The Memorandum of Agreement was signed for Research Incubation covering 400 students and 40 Faculty Members from Mechanical, Mechatronics, CSE, EEE & ECE departments. The agreement was signed by Mr. P Sriram (Chairman) of CIT and Sivakumar of CL Media on 3rd December 2016.

MoU between CL Educate New Delhi and Krupanidhi Group of Institutes (KGI):
The Memorandum of Agreement was signed for Research Incubation covering 40 students and 60 Faculty Members from Pharmaceutical, Management and Physio-therapy departments. The agreement was signed by Dr. Sam Paul Isaac (Director) of KGI and Sivakumar of CL Media on 4th February 2017.

The largest innovation-focused conference in the region, MeltingPot2020 Innovation Summit 2016 was held on 24th and 25th of November at Taj Vivanta, Surajkund, NCR. The first edition saw over 500 footfalls with participation from over 250 CXOs and over 150 Chancellors and Vice Chancellors representing over 1 Million researchers and students in their campuses on one hand and over 100 Billion USD of market capital on the other. The parallel youth innovation showcase event – Young Innovators Festival was attended by over 500 students and saw participation by over 120 teams.

The Summit also featured an innovation showcase zone with over 20 innovative projects and prototypes, over 45 cutting edge speakers from India, Silicon Valley and Indonesia, innovation awards to Young Innovators from schools and colleges and 2 days of networking and collaboration. Watch the highlights of MeltingPot2020 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlw7tAFsIOY

MeltingPot2020 also announced two Industry focused awards – Lifetime Achievement Award, humbly conferred on Prof Sadagopan for his commitment to innovation over the past few decades and the Innovation Leader of the Year Award presented to Mr KT Rama Rao for transforming Telangana into the top state in innovation focus and ease of doing business in the country.

CL Educate’s Innovation Presented at IIM Calcutta to International Audiences

by Dr. Sarvjeet Herald

In February 2016, Akanksha Paliwal and Darpan Saxena were put in-charge of generating online business from CL’s Law website www.lawentrance.com. Coming from marketing and academic departments respectively, soon they realised that a new method to classifying website leads is required in order to expedite sales from the website. Both took the initiative of presenting their review of CL’s Law Website to Mr. Rajeev Ranjan (Head of Marketing) and Mr. Sujit Bhattacharya (CTO) and discussed the proposed solution. As a result, they were given opportunity to pursue their proposal and innovate a new research-based method.

Akanksha and Darpan carried out research at CL's Head Office under the supervision of Mr. Sujit Bhattacharya and Dr. Sarvjeet Herald and innovated a new method to segregate website leads for developing a robust sales funnel to rapidly convert them into paid customers. Their innovation was implemented on CL’s Law website on 1st March 2016. At the end of a 6 month period post-implementation, the various metrics were analysed to measure the effectiveness of the new innovative method. Results showed that in contrast to the previous year, for the period between 1st March 2016 to 31st August 2016, our online sales increased by 196% and on an average the time to convert a web lead into CL’s customer reduced by 63%. This innovation which made significant improvement in the online business process was captured as an intellectual asset and was disseminated at an international conference.

CL Educate presented a Research Poster titled “Creating Efficient B2C Sales Funnel in Education Sector using Personas” at the 4th International Marketing Conference MARCON 2016 held in Indian Institute of Management Calcutta between 22 and 24 December 2016. Both, our research poster and presentation were well received by everyone. Especially, our application-oriented research approach of solving real business problem and applying the solution to a commercial use was highly appreciated by the organising committee and attendees from around the world. The showcase of research-based innovation provided Akanksha and Darpan credibility and recognition of being problem solvers in their area of practise.

CL Educate Ltd takes pride through its ‘Corporate Research Incubator’ for promoting a culture of innovation among its employees, in providing its employees with new global opportunities of recognition and at the same time capturing its Intellectual Assets and disseminating new knowledge for growth.

Journal name: International Journal of Control Theory and Applications
Project name: Design and Implementation of LI-FI Prototype for Interference-Free Communication

Over the past two decades, wireless communication is getting immensely popular all over the world to perform day to day activities. It has transformed the way people shop, educate themselves and transact online. Though mobile devices are equipped with friendly user interface, processing capability and adequate memory, a high speed network with sufficient bandwidth is a major concern. Recently, Visible Light Communication (VLC) has been identified as an interference free communication with high bandwidth. Visible light can be used not only to illuminate the room but also to provide the wireless data connectivity. Light-Fidelity (Li-Fi), a VLC concept, uses Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs for sending signals and produces constant data transfer. By sending signals through LED at high speed, output can be achieved at high speed. The proposed LI-Fi prototype in the study visualizes the future to be one where data transmission employs the use of eco-friendly LEDs that serve a dual purpose of lighting as well as bi-directional data transmission simultaneously.

In the current work, we noticed that while using Li-Fi, the transmitter LED is directly pointing towards receiver so the data cannot leak or get hacked by unauthorized users but if more than one user is accessing the same Li-Fi network simultaneously, there might be some kind of hindrance or interference between their data. For this problem, we can encrypt data and clock our transmitter LEDs at very high rate so every user receives the data swiftly and reliably, which is further area of research. As the proposed prototype is based on simple bidirectional communication using Li-Fi, next level Li-Fi model is under the process to transmit the flawless data between computer systems.

As a Research Coordinator I see my role as a facilitator for the students' research work, rather than as a dispenser of knowledge. The students not only actively participated in the research work but also tried to extend their thinking by explaining not just how their prototype works but also why their solution works.

Journal name: International Journal of Control Theory and Applications
Project name: Design and Implementation of LI-FI Prototype for Interference-Free Communication

Innovation agreement signed between CL Educate & T-Hub for the promotion of Innovation amongst youth

Cl Educate has signed a signed a Memorandum of Understanding with T-Hub, India's fastest-growing start up engine catalyzing innovation, scale and deal flow, to enable innovation and entrepreneurship amongst youth in schools, colleges and Universities.

With this landmark agreement, CL Educate will line extend its promise of enabling the dreams of today’s youth to instilling the spirit of curiosity and research amongst them and creating a framework for them to explore their research instincts to create research papers and projects that have the power to impact the innovation landscape of the country.

T-Hub is a unique public/private partnership between the government of Telangana, three of India’s premier academic institutes - IIIT-H, ISB and NALSAR, and key private sector leaders. It stands at the intersection of the startup, academic, corporate, research and government sectors.

It is the largest startup ecosystem in India today with over 70,000 sq. ft. of space and cutting edge infrastructure and further expanding. The T-Hub model enables investors and corporates to plan programs and capacity building initiatives in a targeted and organized manner.

T-Hub has the largest corporate & investor connect programs and other mentorship programs that help startups across various stages of growth in capacity building to reach a level of scale. Driven by technology and Innovation, this startup engine offers solutions to startups across verticals. Innovative and proprietary IPs like SandBox and PlayBook, none equal in the world, have been designed not only to help them move up the ladder quickly but efficiently too.

For more information, please visit – www.t-hub.co

WORLDWIDE ACADEMIA INDUSTRY NETWORK (WAIN)

The objective of Worldwide Academia Industry Network (WAIN) Platform is to provide interlinked opportunities to both Academic Institutions and Companies to work together in areas such as ‘Research and Innovation’, ‘Academia-Industry Development Programs’ and create an innovation ecosystem for growth in India, as shown in the Figure below.

WAIN was developed to create new opportunities of Corporate Sponsored Open research in Indian institutes, Corporate funded Research scholarships, for spotting application-oriented skilled talent and promoting transferable knowledge from academia to industry.

The collaboration between Academia and Industry through the WAIN platform will not only create success stories but also help both the stakeholders in commercial terms as well as desired quality output. Some of the salient benefits with respect to Academic Institutions and Corporates are as follows:

Benefits to the Academic Institutions:

• Students and Faculty members get a chance to work on real research problems provided by the Industry.
• Improved research output and publications. Higher standing in various National and Global ranking frameworks.
• Ability creation to attract research funds from government and corporate.
• Enhancement in Students’ skills to improve their employability factor and ensure quality placements.
• Attract smart students and top-class faculty members to the institution.
• Improvement in infrastructure through new age technologies and learning mechanisms.

Benefits to the Corporate:

• Greater access to young researchers with multiple capabilities to facilitate R&D.
• Greater exposure to academic research; high visibility and branding
• New Innovation and Technology Improvements in collaboration with premier institutes. Publication credit and intellectual property ownership.
• Expansion of scale of R&D operation and first hand access to new disruptions.
• Wider choice of skilled, motivated students for the hiring pipeline.

The Worldwide Academic Industry Network was formally launched on 8th September 2016 in New Delhi, India by CL Educate. This high profile event was attended by leading luminaries from academia and industry including Apple India, Amazon, ICICI Lombard, Samsung, SAIL, Dibrugarh University, Bennett University, Chitkara University, Shiv Nadar Schools, Thapar University, Chandigarh University to name a few. The launch also witnessed a thought provoking panel discussion on the innovation landscape in the country and also threw light on the need to enable innovation in institutions.

Join WAIN at www.wainconnect.com

Innovation, India and the world of opportunities for innovation.

- V K SaraswatMember, Niti Aayog & Former Secretary Defence R&D

We use the word innovation very loosely and it gets thrown around but I believe that there is so much more to it than we give it credit. Innovation is something that brings an idea to the market. Innovation has a cycle and while it passes through its initial few stages which comprises of creative thinking, process of demonstrating it as a prototype and uncovering its commercial viability, many a times you will find that it has to pass through the phase, known in the innovation circles, as the valley of death. The idea will have to pass through this treacherous valley to become an actual innovation. People sometimes get disheartened by this and say that the idea is tested and is viable but it hasn’t entered the industry and will eventually place the blame on the circumstances rather than concentrating on the whys.
Now the beckoning question is how is that we take the innovation from our academic institution & our R&D labs into the market. What has come into my notice is that innovation is passed to the technological transfer department, which is also plagued by bureaucratic processes that halts its development. It should in fact be passed to a center called value creation center that takes the idea/concept/proof and scales it according to the market needs by creating a value to it and should be tested for repeatability. The second hampering cause is the gap that exists between the industry needs and the academia capabilities to deliver ideas/innovations. The value addition center is therefore responsible of handling both these issues making sure it bridges the gap that currently exists.
Another phenomenon brewing in the Indian innovation coffers is the one of Jugaad. This is helping people make use of existing resources by introducing a mechanism that produces more efficiency. But while that exists if you look at formal innovations, India is still lagging behind the rest of the world by quite a margin. This doesn’t auger well with me and as far as I am concerned the problem lies in the lack of an ecosystem that fosters and harnesses innovation. An example that comes to my mind is that of Singapore who were at the top three positions in the world for innovation and then losing that stride to come to the bottom three or four, two to three years back. A group responsible for understanding this quandary found out that the problems lay in the quality of education that was prevalent. They found out that the pay of the teachers was not good and the people becoming teachers were doing so only after failing in their respective occupations making teaching as a last resort. This made me realize that this problem exists even in my country, giving me a pause for concern. The first thing they implemented in their case was an integrated effort to make sure only those who score up to 130th rank in their graduation examination are eligible to apply for a teachers job and they doubled the salary of the teachers. And lo and behold in three years there was a clamor of people who wanted to get into teaching jobs that certainly made a difference and this is called understanding the pulse of the system and taking corrective action.
Experts can sometimes use their experience to halt the process of innovation and as we know innovation doesn’t necessarily always need experience to become a solution. The answer to this is that we should introduce something called as zero gravity thinkers, these are people who can think freely with nothing tying them down so that they can think outside the box and facilitate those who do too.
India lacks design capabilities. We can’t say the same for the manufacturing sector because we know the strides they have made over the years but it is time to understand why we’re lacking in the field of designing. To overcome this we need to introduce Design Thinking, which is essential for innovation. It is a process where the problem is split into its simple elements for finding solutions, it could be for process or product or anything else. We have no doubt made a lot of progress through our start-ups in designing applications that meet the immediate problems facing the country but what we are missing and what is important for the Indian economy is engineering innovations. Without engineering innovation we cannot create wealth. Wealth can be created only if we do wealth generation. Service sectors only distribute wealth but it is through engineering innovations that we can create wealth and is the dire need of the day for creating a sustained economy.
The take away is that change needs to take place in our thinking, as Modiji says, “soch badal na hai”. A proof to how successful this change of thinking can be is through the example of Titan. A challenge was to make the thinnest watch, waterproof and 3mm in size. The attitude towards India was largely dismissive but ten engineers came together and changed this attitude the world had towards India. They threw down their slavish mentality and said we will do it and we will do it anyhow. This change in their thinking, this urge to prove the world wrong, was what drove them to become design thinkers and they came out with the best, slimmest watch called Titan 3mm watch, which became their most valued product. Finally, innovation success is like an iceberg, where only the tip is visible but what isn’t visible is the majority of the iceberg that makes up the entire efforts of iteration, capacity of taking risk, perseverance and sheer will. With this I say that, if all of us put our heads together India will be a nation of innovators that can contribute to the economy in a big way.

Industry. Academia. Collaboration

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MeltingPot2020 2018

An initiative facilitating dialogue between leaders from the corporate, R&D world and the education sector.